Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze Lavoisier (20 January 1758 in Montbrison, Loire, France – 10 February 1836) was a French chemist and noblewoman. Madame Lavoisier was the wife of the chemist and nobleman Antoine Lavoisier, and acted as his laboratory companion and contributed to his work. She played a pivotal role in the translation of several scientific works, and was instrumental to the standardization of the scientific method. Biography Her father, Jacques Paulze, worked primarily as a parliamentary lawyer and financier. Most of his income came from running the Ferme Générale (the General Farm) which was a private consortium of financiers who paid the French monarchy for the privilege of collecting certain taxes. Her mother, Claudine Thoynet Paulze, died in 1761, leaving behind Marie-Anne, then aged 3, and two other sons. After her mother's death Paulze was placed in a convent where she received her formal education. At the age of thirteen, Paulze received a marriage proposal from the 50-year-old Count d'Amerval. Jacques Paulze tried to object to the union, but received threats about losing his job with the Ferme Générale. To indirectly thwart the marriage, Jacques Paulze made an offer to one of his colleagues to ask for his daughter's hand instead. This colleague was Antoine Lavoisier, a French nobleman and scientist. Lavoisier accepted the proposition, and he and Marie-Anne were married on 16 December 1771. Lavoisier was about 28, while Marie-Anne was about 13. Lavoisier continued to work for the Ferme-Générale but in 1775 was appointed gunpowder administrator, leading the couple to settle down at the Arsenal in Paris. Here, Lavoisier's interest in chemistry blossomed having previously trained at the chemical laboratory of Guillaume François Rouelle, and, with the financial security provided by both his and Paulze's family, as well as his various titles and other business ventures, he was able to construct a state-of-the-art chemistry laboratory. Paulze soon became interested in his scientific research and began to actively participate in her husband's laboratory work. As her interest developed, she received formal training in the field from Jean Baptiste Michel Bucquet and Philippe Gingembre, both of whom were Lavoisier's colleagues at the time. The Lavoisiers spent most of their time together in the laboratory, working as a team conducting research on many fronts. She also assisted him by translating documents about chemistry from English to French. In fact, the majority of the research effort put forth in the laboratory was